The Mistletoe Bride(34)

By now, all but one of the men who had seized me from the cabin had drifted away. He looked a solid citizen, with broad shoulders and a handsome square face. I recognised him from the adventure with the fishing boat that ran aground. He knelt beside me and looked into my eyes.

‘Will you tell me?’ I said, attempting the Breton language.

The man replied in rudimentary, strongly accented French. ‘Do not speak to him. Not speak.’

I felt a spurt of anger on the gaunt man’s behalf, even though I did not know his story.

‘You have made him an outcast, yes I see that. But why? What crime has he committed to be punished in this way?’

He was frowning, whether because he didn’t understand the words or because he didn’t understand why I should be asking the question, I cannot be sure.

‘Do not speak,’ he insisted.

His intransigence made me more belligerent still.

‘I’m not from this village. I shall speak to whomsoever I please.’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘No.’

‘Why should I not speak to him? It’s cruel, I tell you.’

‘That man he is . . .’ He spread his hands wide to indicate he had no words.

I shrugged, though I admit my interest was piqued. ‘Say it in your language. Perhaps I will understand.’

He took a deep breath. ‘He is Ankou.’

My blood went cold and though I had heard quite clearly, I made him repeat it.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Ankou,’ he said again. ‘You understand?’

I had learnt of the Ankou at my grandfather’s knee. It was a ludicrous folk tale with no foundation in fact; even so, there was something in the man’s demeanour that gave me pause for thought.

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘I understand.’

‘He transports the dead.’

My grandfather told me that a legend is a story about someone who may have existed far back in some distant past, whilst a myth is a story that is, by general agreement, a fiction, with no connection to real people, however far back one might search.

He had told me many such stories. Living at the tip of the great Brittany peninsular, summer visits had introduced me to all kinds of fantastic creatures – imps, giants, naiads and sages – each associated with a detail of the coastline or the sea. And the Ankou: a fisherman called by name in the deep of the night by God or the Devil to transport dead souls to the portal of the beyond on the shore of the distant island.

That evening, sitting alone on the hard sand, I thought of how my grandfather had shaped my sensibilities. It was thanks to him that I enjoyed gardening, mostly the growing of food but also, from time to time, flowers and shrubs. He taught me to cook with the produce of his own soil, to set traps for vermin such as rabbits and to carry out repairs about the home. In short, it was his influence that transformed me from a boy into a capable young man.

Because I had slept the entire afternoon I was not in the least tired. The moon was low, almost touching the horizon of the sea, and appeared enormous. Otherwise the sky was veiled with cloud and the air was relatively warm. The cooking utensils had been cleaned and were stacked on a clean board alongside the cooking fire. The heavy iron cauldron retained some of its warmth.

The fishermen would go out once more upon an early tide, so I had no expectation of finding any society in the village. All the same, I rose to my feet and strolled between the squat houses. Here and there I noticed a job to be done – for example guttering that was poorly attached, allowing the rain to run down the wall. I was plunged into a reverie in which I made myself indispensable to this small community of isolated peasants and became a fixture in their lives.

I came to a halt in the centre of the modest cluster of houses, alongside the rustic shrine. In the silvery light I saw that the saint – if saint it was – took the figure of a mariner. I supposed this was unsurprising: what would one expect in a fishing village? But there were some peculiarities that emerged on closer study.

The skill of the stonemason had depicted a thin man standing upright in the aft of a fishing boat, his eye fixed upon the horizon. I turned in order to follow his gaze and realised that it was focused upon the distant island beyond the reef of black rocks. That said, one might just as well have argued that his gaze was fixed upon the moon. The line to each was more or less the same.

At the base of the carving, the artist had rendered an image of the mariner’s boat. It was depicted on the angle and it seemed that an attempt had been made to give a sense of the movement of the craft over the waves.

I was unsure what time it was and was resolved to return to the woman and her children once more, when I heard a sound I recognised from the previous evening. The sliding of the wooden bolt that fastened the door of the cabin at the far end of the village.